eGamer Awards 2011: Studio Of The Year

If we could give this award to something like twenty studios, we most certainly would this year. It was a phenomenal year to be a gamer, but we think it necessary to show appreciation to the guys and girls who made it possible. Let’s take a look at which studio impressed us the most in 2011.

The Rundown

This award is very difficult to hand out. Many developers often bring out more than one game each year, maybe multiple amazing ones or a few not-so-great ones, maybe all awesome, maybe none – so you can see why we can’t really judge this award on quantity. Naturally, it’s quality we’re looking for, but that’s not the sole contributor, since, as you know, there are also many quality games out there that continue to be released with each passing month. So how exactly do we hand out this award? Well, we take a look at the games that come out and think long and hard at what they accomplished and what the developers accomplished with them. The developers that take risks and are rewarded, go out of their way to bring something we gamers want, those who try their best to please us, working hard all the way, and never turning their backs on us – all of these are contributors to receiving this award. It’s a vast combination of dedication, games, quality, doing things the people want to see, doing something completely new and ultimately creating something that is worth every cent and second we spend on it. The kind of games where we can clearly see the developers love and passion shine through, and makes us appreciative of them. This plays a massive part in our selections, because there are many developers who make incredible games, but we have a special appreciation for various achievements.

The Nominees

Rocksteady Studios

Rocksteady Studios once again proved how far they’re willing to go to give gamers what they want. They continuously find creative ways to make excellent use of the Batman universe, and they simply overstuffed Arkham City with exciting content, clearly trying to give gamers as much as they possibly can. They don’t just seem to rely on “Batman” to make a good or successful game, and they really dedicate so much effort and love to their two games, to not only raise the bar for licensed games, but enable them to have the potential to stand as equals among the greatest games of the year. Rocksteady truly pulled out all the stops for Arkham City, delivering an epic Dark Knight experience and even deciding to light-heartedly troll fans at the VGAs when Joker won the best character award.

——————————————————————————————————————————————

Naughty Dog

Naughty Dog deserve lots of credit this year. Firstly, we believe they succeeded in crafting their magnum opus with Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. They perfected the formula of the game, and really produced a quality experience, one of the best of the entire year. Not just with single player, but they also went out of their way to dramatically improve the multiplayer and turn it into something amazing.

Then we took heed of the fact that Naughty Dog supported Uncharted 2: Among Theives and constantly delivered specials and new content for it right until the third game released, and they’ll no doubt do the same for Drake’s Deception. Naughty Dog loves gaming, and loves and respects its community. A pure example of this would be that after the game received numerous complaints from fans for its aiming system, Naughty Dog invited a couple of fans to its HQ to discuss the problem, and thereafter released a patch that not only allowed players to choose between Uncharted 3’s controls and an alternate set-up similar to the one found in Uncharted 2, but also added missing motion blur effects in the single player campaign and introduced numerous fixes and tweaks in multiplayer as well.

Finally, despite Naughty Dog admitting that there are plenty more stories to tell in the Uncharted universe, they clearly aren’t going to ride the money-wagon, as they said that they would only make another as long as fans want one, and if they can continue to make something new and interesting that can live up to the really high quality set by previous titles. They’ve said that they don’t want to ruin the series, which immediately increases our respect for them and makes us believe that they’re gamers at heart. Plus, the studio announced a new IP, which looks pretty great and illustrates this point.

——————————————————————————————————————————————

CD Projekt RED

CD Projekt RED gave us more than enough reasons to fall in love with them this year. Not only did they create one of the best RPGs we’ve seen in recent years and our personal best PC game, but they also went the extra mile to deliver something special for gamers. Firstly, they simply overstuffed the collector’s edition with content, including a making of video, manual, official soundtrack, world map, art book, a replica of a Temerian coin from the game, a set of dice, playing cards with a rulebook to help you play card games themed after the game, a pamphlet that comes with a cursed coin, papercraft figures, and stickers. There was a voucher to download the Vernon Roche Commando Jacket, which was exclusive to the collector’s edition and was a clothing item that significantly enhanced the player’s sword skills. Lastly, it came with an actual bust of Geralt. A replica model of his head. Of course it was costly, but there was also a Premium Edition that came with tons of bonus content and was available at launch, for those who wanted extras but didn’t have enough cash for the full collector’s edition.

Furthermore, CD Projekt went out of their way when it came to supporting the actual game. The first patch not only resolved many performance issues, but removed DRM due to its grievances. The second patch continued to fix issues and improve the playing experience. The third patch, however, pleasantly included a plethora of fan-requested improvements, which included a difficulty adjustment for the Prologue level, increased support for a variety of aspect ratios and a large number of other gameplay tweaks and fixes. In addition to the changes, the update also gave gamers free DLC, which came in the form of an extra quest. Before their next big patch, they released a minor one to fix some issues the third patch brought. Then, CD Projekt impressed us yet again with their massive fourth update, which introduced three big new features to the game, including the brand new Arena gameplay mode, where players fought waves of enemies, a Tutorial system that helped players with the complex elements of the game, and a new Dark difficulty mode, which aimed to provide a true challenge to players in addition to unique rewards in the form of Dark items. And of course it also brought with it a host of game improvements and tweaks as well, all of which bettered the experience.

Finally, for the cherry on top, they will be bringing their exceptional RPG to the Xbox360 next year.

——————————————————————————————————————————————

NetherRealm Studios

NetherRealm Studios worked hard to bring back the true Mortal Kombat experience, and ultimately we felt they delivered the best fighting game of the year. They took a diminishing fighter and not only returned it to glory, but raised it back to a level where it can compete with the other top fighters on the market. NetherRealm impressed us when they worked closely with fans of the game in order to achieve this, acknowledging fan support and input all in order to make Mortal Kombat into something special. We remember our first reactions to this game’s announcement, when we all shook our heads already anticipating a failure after that last game we had with Superman fighting Sub Zero. But all that changed when we got to play this game, as we were pleasantly surprised and had an absolute blast with it. Not just the combat, but the game was filled with content, even including a story mode that was basically like a full length movie. We appreciate NetherRealm’s achievement, and feel they deserve the credit.

——————————————————————————————————————————————

And the winner is…

This award was damn difficult to do, because there were so many studios that we are grateful to and wanted to acknowledge this year, but couldn’t because of natural restrictions regarding our nominees list. And when looking at our list, we would pretty much love to award all of them. But there can only be one winner, and after much debate we finally reached our conclusion.

The WINNER of eGamer’s Studio of the Year Award of 2011 is…

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CD Projekt RED!

In the end, we felt that CD Projekt RED were fully deserving of taking this award, and did more than enough to earn it. The amount they’ve done for PC gamers and still continue to do for them is highly impressive, and we definitely felt like we were being given the same level of appreciation that we showed them. This makes CD Projekt RED our choice for the Studio of the Year Award for 2011.